The present invention relates generally to the manufacture of electrical machinery and more particularly to establishing and insulating internal electrical connections in dynamoelectric machines.
Considerable art has been developed regarding the establishing of electrically insulated connections in dynamo-electric machines which includes the interconnecting of windings of such machines with other windings or with external lead wires and then insulating such connections. For example, the Reynolds U.S. Pat. No. 3,912,957 which is commonly assigned to the assignee of the present invention, discloses, among other things, a multiple barrel tubular insulator which may, for example, be formed from a single sheet of insulating material. In one disclosed form, a multibarrel insulator is slipped over particular wires to be connected to other lead wires; whereupon, insulation-free portions of those wires are connected to the other lead wires. After connections are established, the multiple barrel insulator is slid over the connections to insulate those connections, one from the other, as well as to insulate those connections from other external machine parts.
It is also known to connect insulation-free ends of two or more wires by crimping a connector about those ends so that the several interconnected wires extend from the crimped connector in generally the same direction. For this type of electric interconnection, the McNeal U.S. Pat. No. 3,748,510 which is commonly assigned to the assignee of the present invention, discloses, among other things, tubular insulating receptacles into which such a connection may be pushed for insulating that connection from other machine parts. McNeal discloses, for example, that sheet material may be formed into a tube and then crimped or heated near the central region of the tube to form two isolated receptacles extending in opposite directions from the crimped region. While this latter arrangement avoids the need for threading the wires through the insulator prior to effecting the electrical interconnection, the connected wires in this latter arrangement may, in some cases, become dislodged from their insulating receptacles.
It is known that connections can be insulated by wrapping or deforming pressure sensitive tape therearound; however this technique is often time consuming, especially when multiple connections must be insulated and does not allow for intentional removal of the connections if necessary and for subsequent reuse of the insulating material. Thus, it would be desirable to develop a new and improved connection insulator with connection retaining provisions to prevent inadvertent removal of the connection while allowing easy intentional removal of the connections for repair, testing or inspection, and an insulator which would be reusable after connections have been removed therefrom.
Accordingly, a general object of the present invention is to provide new and improved connection insulators and new and improved methods of making and insulating electrical connections.
A more specific object of the present invention is to provide new and improved connection insulators having improved connection retention characteristics.
Another object of the present invention is to provide new and improved connection insulators which allow intentional removal and subsequent reinsertion of connections while impeding inadvertent removal of the connections.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide new and improved methods of making internal connections in a dynamoelectric machine which minimize fabrication time and improve reliability.